Using 98SE >1Gb - Question

[risk_reversal]

I dual boot a system with XP/98SE and wanted to increase the system ram from 1GB to 2GB.

I am a bit confused and have a question to ask.

If my understanding is correct from reading all the relevant posts, then I have 2 available options:

1. Get RLoew's patch - where the system will detect all the physical ram ie 2Gb in my case.

or

2. Use xrayer's solution. With xrayer's solution, I also have 2 possibilities one where 98SE is allowed to see all the physical ram or to additionally tweak MaxPhysPage with a value no greater than 48000 (HEX) and cap the ram at 1500Mb which is the max 98SE can detect natively.

Have I understood this correctly please or am I still very confused.

Many thanks for any info provided

Cheers

[rloew]

I dual boot a system with XP/98SE and wanted to increase the system ram from 1GB to 2GB.

I am a bit confused and have a question to ask.

If my understanding is correct from reading all the relevant posts, then I have 2 available options:

1. Get RLoew's patch - where the system will detect all the physical ram ie 2Gb in my case.

or

2. Use xrayer's solution. With xrayer's solution, I also have 2 possibilities one where 98SE is allowed to see all the physical ram or to additionally tweak MaxPhysPage with a value no greater than 48000 (HEX) and cap the ram at 1500Mb which is the max 98SE can detect natively.

Have I understood this correctly please or am I still very confused.

Many thanks for any info provided

Cheers

Option 2 limits the RAM available to Windowx 98 to 1.2GB. The two methods accomplish the same thing in two different ways.

[risk_reversal]

Many thanks for your reply rloew.

Yes typo earlier meant 1150Mb (not 1500Mb)

May I trouble you for some further info as regards the patch. In essence I do not really need 98SE to detect 2Gb.

What I am looking for is the path of least resistance (by resistance read hassle). xrayer's solutions has some people who report issues. Equally, I think that I read some post(s) as regards some issues with the ram limitation patch (perhaps that was user issues).

Is there any situation that you have been made aware of where the ram patch is troublesome, by that I mean systems based on AMD cpu, SIS/Via chipsets (or such) or any pre-requisite requirements for using the ram patch.

The reason I am asking is that whichever method I go for (and it's not the small fee from your offering that would deter me from the ram patch), I would necessarily engage in extended testing of the solution (to confirm integrity on my system) and prior to making any move forwards, it would be good to have such info in advance.

I hope that you see what I mean.

Good Luck

Edited November 6, 2010 by risk_reversal

[Jolaes]

If it helps,

I have been using RLoew's Ram Limitation Patch for a few months on a computer based on nforce3 chipset with Opteron 170 CPU, 2 GiB RAM and a GF 7900GT video card. OPsys is Win98SE2ME.

It is rock stable, no matter what cache and swap sizes I set (within sensible limits, of course). More importantly, I am also using KernelEx and applications designed for W2K and XP, and these work flawlessly with the Patch.

I cannot tell the same about using the standalone IO.SYS patch by XRayer. Many of my apps and games were running unstable, that's exactly why I decided to buy the patch, a decision I did not regret. Y.m.m.v., but with a more complex (ie. multitasking) Win9X system the Patch is the better solution.

A little off topic, but if your system also contains large HDDs, SATA drives on integrated controller etc. and you want to play safe, the TBPLUS package from the same author may also prove indispensible. Well it did for me.

Regards

J.

[Multibooter]

I cannot tell the same about using the standalone IO.SYS patch by XRayer. Many of my apps and games were running unstable, that's exactly why I decided to buy the patch, a decision I did not regret. Y.m.m.v., but with a more complex (ie. multitasking) Win9X system the Patch is the better solution.

I have been using xrayer's io.sys patch since April 2008, there are no issues I can attribute to the patch.

I am very happy that rloew provides professional patches for Win98, this is essential for the Win98 community.

Eventually I intend to compare the performance and issues of rloew's and xrayer's patches. I have 2 nearly-identical dual core desktop computers, running on cloned HDDs with System Commander plus various operating systems plus apps, so this setup could permit some interesting benchmarking.

My gut feeling, and I may be wrong, is that xrayer's patch somehow slows down the system. I actually expect rloew's patch to be better than xrayer's because rloew's patch has ongoing support and updates.

[dencorso]

I've tried both, and, in my experience, the system is more stable with RLoew's patch.

[rloew]

Many thanks for your reply rloew.

Yes typo earlier meant 1150Mb (not 1500Mb)

May I trouble you for some further info as regards the patch. In essence I do not really need 98SE to detect 2Gb.

What I am looking for is the path of least resistance (by resistance read hassle). xrayer's solutions has some people who report issues. Equally, I think that I read some post(s) as regards some issues with the ram limitation patch (perhaps that was user issues).

Is there any situation that you have been made aware of where the ram patch is troublesome, by that I mean systems based on AMD cpu, SIS/Via chipsets (or such) or any pre-requisite requirements for using the ram patch.

The reason I am asking is that whichever method I go for (and it's not the small fee from your offering that would deter me from the ram patch), I would necessarily engage in extended testing of the solution (to confirm integrity on my system) and prior to making any move forwards, it would be good to have such info in advance.

I hope that you see what I mean.

Good Luck

I am not aware of any CPU or Chipset issues. There are no special requirements for using the Patch.

Large Registry and Gigabit Ethernet issues may become worse with more RAM. There is an option in the Patch (/M) that eliminates these issues. The alternative methods do not deal with these issues.

[LoneCrusader]

While I have not tested xrayer's solution, I can vouch for RLoew's patch. I have been using it since January 2009 and have never had a single issue with it.

Basically, you install the patch and forget about it. There is no tweaking, testing, setting MaxPhysPage or anything else. The patch patches Windows system files, so AFAIK it is completely chipset/processor/hardware independent.

[risk_reversal]

Jolaes said:

A little off topic, but if your system also contains large HDDs, SATA drives on integrated controller etc. and you want to play safe, the TBPLUS package from the same author may also prove indispensible. Well it did for me.

That is not required the board I have it on runs the HDDs from a Promise SATA controller so I do not have the >137GB HDD limitation. I did actually purchase that patch or it's predecessor years ago but subsequently opted for the solution I currently use.

Multibooter said:

My gut feeling, and I may be wrong, is that xrayer's patch somehow slows down the system. I actually expect rloew's patch to be better than xrayer's because rloew's patch has ongoing support and updates.

Many thanks Multibooter.

dencorso said:

I've tried both, and, in my experience, the system is more stable with RLoew's patch.

Your valued info is much appreciated.

rloew said:

I am not aware of any CPU or Chipset issues. There are no special requirements for using the Patch.

Large Registry and Gigabit Ethernet issues may become worse with more RAM. There is an option in the Patch (/M) that eliminates these issues. The alternative methods do not deal with these issues.

Thanks

LoneCrusader said:

While I have not tested xrayer's solution, I can vouch for RLoew's patch. I have been using it since January 2009 and have never had a single issue with it.

Basically, you install the patch and forget about it. There is no tweaking, testing, setting MaxPhysPage or anything else. The patch patches Windows system files, so AFAIK it is completely chipset/processor/hardware independent.

Ok well it looks like it's the patch for me. As you say LoneCrusader, I just want to install it and not have to worry about it running a muck or spending weeks testing it.

Let me ask one final question as regards the ram patch itself and more specifically the installation of the patch.

My current settings in System.ini running 1Gb are as follows:

[386Enh]

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

[vcache]

minfilecache=131072

maxfilecache=262144

No changes to MaxPhysPage or other tweaks (that I recall).

Questions:

1. From what I have read the patch can be install in dos.

2. Presumably it would be better to install the patch with only 1Gb of ram ie prior to ram increase.

3. What about my current tweaks (especially [vcache], do I remove them after (or before) patch install.

Just trying to get an idea of the install procedure.

Many thanks for all the info and feedback.

Edited November 9, 2010 by risk_reversal

[Cyker]

I'd say if you only have even a little more than 1GB RAM, get rloew's patch. If you have 1GB RAM or less, see if you can get things working with the basic tweaks (ini tweaks etc.).

I was running on 1GB RAM for years with just the ini tweaks and never had any problems.

It does seem to be dependent on chipsets somewhat; nForce3 people have had a lot more luck running up to a gig whereas other chipsets seem to have trouble at 512MB.

(On the downside tho', it seems nForce 3 chipsets are incapable of using graphics cards with 512MB RAM in 9x!)

If the ini tweaks doesn't work or you have more than 1GB RAM, patchmem is the easiest way to get it working by far.

[rloew]

Let me ask one final question as regards the ram patch itself and more specifically the installation of the patch.

My current settings in System.ini running 1Gb are as follows:

[386Enh]

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

[vcache]

minfilecache=131072

maxfilecache=262144

No changes to MaxPhysPage or other tweaks (that I recall).

Questions:

1. From what I have read the patch can be install in dos.

2. Presumably it would be better to install the patch with only 1Gb of ram ie prior to ram increase.

3. What about my current tweaks (especially [vcache], do I remove them after (or before) patch install.

Just trying to get an idea of the install procedure.

Many thanks for all the info and feedback.

1. Yes it can be installed from DOS.

2. If you run from DOS, it doesn't matter if the RAM has already been added or not. You can even install Windows 9x into a Computer with 2GB of RAM by installing the Patch from DOS.

3. My Patch sets the Absolute Maximum File Cache to 512MiB by default. There is an Option to set to something else, /C:256 will set it to your chosen MaxFileCache setting. Your VCACHE tweaks are lower and will override mine. If you are happy with them you can keep them.